Major Books That Weren't Bestsellers

What books sell well and what books go on to be important are far from the same thing. A history PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, proved this point by compiling the bestselling books of the 20th century. He then called out those that are critically acclaimed and historically important, determined with help from the Modern Library and The American Intellectual Tradition, and very few titles made both lists.

One comparison of the two lists and it becomes very clear that some of the most famous, beloved, and respected books were not popular in their day. Here are 30 books that found fame late in life.

• Call of the Wild, Jack London
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
• Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
• Ulysses, James Joyce
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence
• The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
• Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
• Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, Benjamin Spock
• The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
• Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis

Read the rest below.

• The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
• Charlotte's Web, E.B. White
• Lord of the Flies, William Golding
• Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
• On the Road, Jack Kerouac
• Catch-22, Joseph Heller
• Man's Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl
• The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
• One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
• The Color Purple, Alice Walker
• Beloved, Toni Morrison
• Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
• The Hours, Michael Cunningham